I’ve never taught rhetoric before, but it’s my assignment this semester. I’m enjoying it much more than I expected—fortunately, my students are intelligent and enthusiastic. Our main textbook is Aristotle’s Rhetoric.
Anyway, here’s the point. Rhetoric is chiefly used today in politics and advertising. I despise politics, of course. And usually, I despise advertising too. But I thought it might be a good idea to use Aristotle’s principles to try and sell a few copies of The Hawk and the Wolf.
Aristotle says there are three different types of appeal you can make in a speech. The first is the appeal to reason—you can prove something to an audience by giving them a reasoned and logical argument. That doesn’t work for most people, of course—if you’ve ever met someone who held an opinion that logic couldn’t shake, you know what I mean. For these people, there are two other appeals. There is the appeal to emotion (emotions are very persuasive) and the appeal to ethos (not to ethics—the appeal to ethos is the appeal that ingratiates the speaker with an audience).
Anyway, here goes.
The appeal to reason. Buy The Hawk and the Wolf because it’s quite simply the best novel on Merlin ever written. By “best,” I mean most readable and original. It’s very readable because all my reviewers agree on this. (That, buy the way, is what is known as a common topic, the appeal to authority.) Cameron Lowe, for example, calls it “a joy to read . . . [the] descriptions, both of the world and in it, are ripe and vivid.” William Toliver says, “I was involved from the very first.” And it’s original because it places Merlin in a historical milieu where he’s never been placed by any writer before. As Tom Shippey says in Arthuriana, it’s “Intriguing and original . . . myth, legend, romance, and history are inextricably entwined.” Thus, assuming that you want something entertaining and unusual, you should buy The Hawk and the Wolf for yourself, your friends, and your family, and persuade them to buy it for everyone they know. In fact, don’t rest until not only everybody you know owns a copy of The Hawk and the Wolf, but everybody you’ve ever met or are likely to meet also owns a copy.
Ah, the appeal to reason! Beautiful, ain’t it?
Next, the appeal to emotion. Now, I could just say, “Buy a copy of The Hawk and the Wolf, or else you’ll die, go to Hell, and burn for ever.” That’s an appeal to emotion—the emotion of fear. But there are other emotions. Take, for example, the appeal to the need for community: “Buy The Hawk and the Wolf. Everybody else has.” The appeal to paranoia: “Exactly why don’t you have a copy of The Hawk and the Wolf?” The appeal to comfort: “The Hawk and the Wolf is just the book to snuggle down with in a plush armchair with a cup of hot chocolate and some cheesecake.” And the ever-popular appeal to sex: “Only people who have read The Hawk and the Wolf can ever get a date.” That pretty much takes care of the appeal to emotion.
Last of all comes the appeal to ethos. You can do lots of things to ingratiate yourself with an audience. You can tell a joke, for instance. “What’s the difference between Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe? The dumber one hasn’t read The Hawk and the Wolf.” You can make people feel sorry for you: “My marriage is going to fail if I don’t sell more copies of The Hawk and the Wolf.”
Sigh.
Sometimes I wonder how advertising people can look at themselves in the mirror in the morning.
